At the start of The Apocalypse Codex, Bob Howard (protagonist) is established formally as an unreliable narrator: Rule 34 and Halting State use 2nd person for distinctly different reasons. Again, the name means nothing to me, but according to wikipedia, he’s “best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise, a female action hero/undercover trouble-shooter/enforcer.” That seems to track with the jacket copy, “…External Assets dispatches the brilliant, beautiful and entirely unpredictable Persephone Hazard to infiltrate…” This series is a literary mash-up that, if it does what it sets out to, will introduce readers to a great group of writers while providing a rollicking fun adventure in its own right. I found the answer on Stross’ Blog: Peter O’Donnell. I was also wondering what author might be getting the laundry treatment this time. I love this idea and it makes me want to track down some books by Len Deighton and Anthony Price. Where The Atrocity Archives was written in the idiom of Len Deighton and The Jennifer Morgue was a pastiche of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, The Fuller Memorandum is a homage of sorts to Anthony Price’s Dr David Audley/Colonel Jack Butler series of spy thrillers, and features two minor characters named Roskill and Panin, names which appeared as recurring characters in Price’s series. From The Fuller Memorandum wikipedia article: But it turns out that Stross is embracing the style of other writers, one for each book. I’m not that knowledgeable about spy fiction and so the name Len Deighton didn’t mean anything to me when I saw it in the Acknowledgements of The Atrocity Archives. “I”m bluffing, but I can look it up on Wikipedia later.” -Bob I was and still am enamored by the “math = magic” at the core of the series, but when I read all the material on the Jacket of The Apocalypse Codex I got intrigued by more than just the computational demonology.
I’ve striven since to capture the same tone as that review (which I like), while fleshing the content out a bit more (with this I struggle).
One of the first formal reviews I ever published online was for the first book in this series, The Atrocity Archive. The geeky enthusiasm which follows is my own.
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